Great Organ - Digital Organ Software Platform

The new standard in Digital Virtual Organ technology.

Built by organists. For organists, not for profit.

Simple uncluttered interface

Once you have configured the software and installed some organs, you can run the organs by choosing them from the carousel or list view. Select organ, and click Start. It is that simple.

Natural interactive feel to console. No menus, toolbars or pages of complex settings and busy user interface to master. Looks like an organ, works like an organ! Built for full touchscreen and advanced gesture support but will also allow full mapping of hardware MIDI stops too.

Simple MIDI configuration

After answering some simple questions about your console, the software can then learn each keyboard and pedalboard, using a quick and easy process.

Pistons can be rapidly learned, including the custom control pistons which give the organist access to some of our powerful playing aids

Advanced audio control

Audio and latency control

Surround and stereo audio balancing, with fine control over surround processing balance.

Midi adjustment

Control over midi devices, master tuning and expression sensitivity.

Environmental processing

The most advanced 2 and 6 channel software convolution reverb system currently available. Users can supply their own impulse responses.

Rank adjustment

Ranks can be individually adjusted for volume, tone and surround sound position. Surround position changes are effective immediately and don't use additional wasteful surround sound samples!

32 Band EQ

No need to fiddle with samples to adjust the audio output to match your room and amplification, use the correct tool for the job, and it's built in as standard!

Music control

High resolution music display with simple librarian and search features. Performance and practice sessions modes which allow stop registrations to be sequenced against a individual pieces of music

Programming of stop sequences is as simple as selecting the stops and pressing a single button. Sequences are recalled on opening the piece of music and can be navigated by pressing just two buttons or programmed pistons

The complete out of the box virtual organ software solution

Built from scratch, without compromise, using the very latest developments in cutting edge software technology

Iteratively built and designed with collaboration with its user base over the last 4 years, and under continuous development and improvement

Due to highly optimized efficient code and memory usage, this software runs on a fairly modest Windows x64 based computer, without need for special hardware, save for a fairly modest dedicated sound card.

Able to utilize all processor cores, hyper-threading and parallel processing as standard, to make your experience more fluid and responsive

Intuitive, natural feeling, modern user experience. Highly sophisticated and powerful functionality, without being unnecessarily complicated to use

Several different built in reverb solutions, including 2 and 6 channel highly configurable Convolution reverb, AS STANDARD!

Built in music library display (two or more screens), and standalone interactive music library display application.

Ability to store registration changes against items from the music library. Opening a piece of music can also set the initial registration automatically, and accessing the next registration change in the recorded sequence is at a touch of a single button.

Extensible modular architecture, offering a full programmers API, and also ability to interact with the organ from non-native technologies and just about any programming language.

User interface uses the full power of your graphics card (GPU) hardware acceleration to free up the computer to process the audio and software loads.

Compatible with a wide array of MIDI hardware, custom built consoles and factory MIDI hardware.

You can use your own favourite VST 2.4 Plugin effects, directly in the software without fuss or complex configuration

Record and playback MIDI recordings made on console, and optionally write 32 bit lossless recorded audio file (.WAV), 2 or 6 channel

At Great Organ, we ripped up the rule book and preconceived notions of how a piece of digital organ software should work. We decided to start with a blank canvas and designed the software to respect the physics of how a real organ works, from scratch, whilst using the most advanced software development techniques and audio technology currently available to deliver this.

We started at the point of not only considering what we as organists want from a virtual organ, but also discussing this with other organists from around the world, who fed into the initial design and development direction of this software. It became quite clear that some were frustrated with existing software offerings and required something more natural, simple to use and more deliberately focussed on what an organist might typically need from their console, and more importantly, what they DID NOT need!

Whilst none of our organ dispositions can be said to be photo realistic, we have tried to keep the spirit and specification of the instrument as close as possible, and as natural to use as possible. Whilst each organ does include a number of features that are not found on the original console, such as MIDI recorders, they do feature on each disposition from a usability point of view. Usability is paramount over absolute historical accuracy in our view, especially as the user interface has already had to be compromised in some way to fit on to computer screens.

During the design and consultation process for this software a number of great ideas came forth but were not included in the software. The general rule taken was, if the local priest won't let you do it to the real pipe organ, you can't do it to this one either!
That said, we have made some concessions in this respect, and you CAN tonally alter ranks and balance their volumes to your choosing, and the other new features included in this software take care of differences in environment, audio system, amplification and so on, so the original quality of sound should always be able to be reproduced, without requiring expensive additional software or hardware.

We try wherever possible NOT to artificially manipulate the sound of the raw samples, save for noise reduction, leaving the tuning as recorded wherever possible. You may find the odd pipe out of tune. If so, let us know and we will fix it!
We do not use wet samples of any kind, or recorded release samples, but prefer the more accurate and efficient practice of generating release sounds, on the fly. The environment in which the organ sounds can be completely controlled by the user with our entirely brand new world class 2 and 6 channel 24bit convolution reverb.
The resultant sound can be further tuned using the built in 32 band Equalizer, which compensates for differences in audio equipment, room size and tone, very flexibly.
If you have your own VST 2.4 64 bit reverb, equalizer or other audio effects, you can use these in conjunction or instead of those already built in as standard.

We have not used external tools or plugins from other vendors when it has come to environmental processing effects and reverb. We took the difficult route and wrote our own, simply because there was nothing out there that met our requirements or was performant enough. Whilst this has added a significant amount of time to our software development tasks we feel that this investment has been more than justified in the resultant audio output quality.

Another consideration for organists is digital music storage and display, and not having stacks of often irreplacable scores and manuscript lying about the console! Our built in music library and viewer stores your scanned music and allows you to bring up any piece of music in your library at the touch of a button, in fact just like any other score viewer.
As part of the music viewer, and with students in mind, we added the facility of adding practice lists and performance running lists to the viewer, so music can be recalled sequentially at any point from a user specified running order.
However, a dumb music display would have been a wasted opportunity, so we have recently added a much requested feature, which is the ability to link the registrations to the sheet music and performances. Whilst this doesn't automatically select your registration sequences for you as you are playing by some magic, it does allow you to record any number of registration sequences for a piece of music, which can then be recalled with a single button or piston press.
When a piece of music or event has stop registrations sequenced against it, when opening that piece of music, the organ will automatically select the starting registration, with the organist only needing to press NEXT to select the next registration in the sequence.
The music viewer application can also be run standalone, even on another monitor and can still offer this control over the organ registrations when running in this mode.
Programming registrations into registration sequences is as easy as pulling the stops you require and pressing one button to record that registration setting.

This software is under constant development with a track record of regular updates which address user issues, bugs and suggested improvements. Whilst we make no warranties in terms of service level agreements, our existing user base will testify to our record of constant improvement, refinement and moves to newer technology as it becomes available.
We do not take our users, or our support of users for granted, and all issues and suggestions raised by our users are listened to and almost always implemented if considered viable.
This software DOES NOT have any internet connected capability, and does not phone home or pass information from your computer of any kind. We have gone to extensive lengths to not only make the software difficult to tamper with, but also taken the same cautious approach scanning everything we upload to our website for malware.
This software does have some additional natural defenses against intrusion and reverse engineering so you can be assured our software is as safe as it can be from any malicious or unwanted intrusion or attack.
Our website is also encrypted for your protection and security, and all traffic is encrypted using our publicly signed SSL certificate (Always check the padlock in your browsers address bar).

All of this comes as standard. The software does it all without restrictions, limits on polyphony or requiring expensive optional extras

We believe everybody should be able to enjoy this software at its best and strongly feel that it is a questionable practice to deliberately cripple software in order to charge more for the unrestricted version. As such, there is only one version of this software.

We need your feedback !

This project is largely driven by user requests and feedback so your views are really important to us.

If you find something not working or you don't like, please come and talk to us first, as the chances are we can probably do something about your issue quickly.

Almost every issue encountered by users so far has had a resolution, so please don't be shy. We are only as good as the feedback we get!!

As this software is under a constant release cycle of regular updates, you may be surprised at how quickly we are able to incorporate all feedback received.